DayZ Spends A Month Being The Top Selling Game On Steam

Every single week on end since the original week when it launched, DayZ has been Steam's number one best selling game for an entire month. Since it's debut on December 16th, the game has gone on to triumph as a strong selling independent title on Steam.

Blues News has been tracking the top 10 charts for Steam every week on end, and from December 22nd, 2013 to January 19th, 2014 (today), Dean “Rocket” Hall and Bohemia Interactive's standalone “alpher” of DayZ has managed to top the charts as the number one, best selling game on Steam. It was at the top of the charts on December 22nd, top of the chart on December 29th, top of the charts for the January 5th, top of the charts for January 12th, and top of the charts for January 19th.

It's not just some figment of prestige either. The number one spot is accompanied by hard numbers from Bohemia Interactive, where it was revealed the game managed to move more than a million copies in less than four weeks.

All those saying the game industry is dying really have no idea what they're talking about, especially in regards to PC gaming. The independent sector is just booming like never before. It's like the early days of the Shareware era all over again.

DayZ is far from complete, much less far from perfect. The game is still being worked on even as I type this out, with the early alpha phase offering players measures of playability in small pockets of content that's been released to the public. The latest additions to the game include things like sawed-off shotguns and berry-picking. I imagine not all berries will be healthy for you, though.

The game is still a long ways from where the mod for Arma II used to be, but “Rocket” and crew are definitely moving toward where they would like to be, one small patch at a time.

The standalone “alpher” will definitely pick up the popularity when the game finally receives the vehicles. Back when the game was expected to launch in June, “Rocket” mentioned that vehicles would probably be delayed until September. So if we're going by that same timeline, we might expect vehicles three months from the original launch date, which would put the date sometime in March... maybe.

It's very surprising, in a way, how much momentum DayZ has managed to rack up as a game that stumbled onto the market at the end of the year with nary an advertisement or marketing campaign. However, if the sales stay as consistent as they have been, then DayZ could be one of the biggest selling games of the first quarter of 2014 that isn't an AAA title from a major publisher or released on home consoles. It probably makes a lot of publishers who bemoan PC game sales and piracy look kind of foolish, eh?

(Main image courtesy of MiltenART)